


Time Has Brought Your Heart To Me

by Fake_Brit



Category: Scandal (TV)
Genre: ALL THE FLUFFY FEELINGS, Alternate Universe - Time Travel, F/M, Future Fic, Jake is having none of the Olivia is fine as Future!First Lady crap, Light Angst, Season/Series 05
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-27
Updated: 2017-10-27
Packaged: 2019-01-25 01:49:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,703
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12520232
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fake_Brit/pseuds/Fake_Brit
Summary: "His heart does a backflip. It’s not the first time, but the feeling never changes."Or, the one in which Jake can time-travel, and his Future!Self finds himself in 5A!DC. Let's just say that he's not really thrilled.





	Time Has Brought Your Heart To Me

**Author's Note:**

> I started writing this for a friend's birthday a few months ago, when season seven was still floating somewhere in the writers' room, and B613!Olake was just a concept I couldn't wait for. Today, though I still have hope (haven't seen 7x04 yet) I'm posting it because so far, the direction of the season has been a giant ??? to me. Hope you enjoy. See you on the other side with notes that would be spoilery right now

He has barely opened his eyes when nausea growls deep within his stomach. The bed he’s lying on creaks as he moves. There’s something about what little he can see of the room that does not sit well with him, although he can’t grasp what it is quite yet.

Then—his left hand rises slowly, heavy as it feels; a golden band around that finger stares at him, unmistakable in its simplicity. His wedding ring. _Shit_.

-:-

“Are you okay?” Liv asks. She has been staring at him for a while now—and when she stares, stuff comes out. He should know; he has seen people crumble under that stare.

“I’m fine, Liv,” he’s not lying; he’s used to this, as uncomfortable as time traveling might make him in the spur of the moment. (Which, spoiler alert—it does; the echoes of the throbbing in his head haven’t faded yet.)

“How about you, huh?” _Talk about being smooth, Ballard. Espionage: the basics._

“Me,” she repeats flatly, eyes slightly narrowed at his insinuation, “why in hell wouldn’t I be?” She is trying to glare at him, the sharpness of her voice still ringing in the quiet.

Try as she might,—and she is trying; he can see that in the set of her brows, the hard, still line of her mouth—he is still able to see it, see the shadows hanging around her eyes; the stillness taking root inside of her.

Under the small table they are currently sitting at, his hand tightens into a fist—knuckles trembling, nails digging into skin and all that.

_ Don’t say a word. You can’t. _

“Liv,” it’s almost a groan; he can’t help himself. He had hoped to have misremembered, messed up his dates somehow, but no; he’s perfectly on track. “I can’t see you like this,” it’s a hot, tight whisper. 

“Like what,” she hisses, the hot mug in front of her forgotten, barely a sip taken; his own food dismissed. It was all for show, anyway. “Annoyed? Well—too bad, James Bond,” her voice hasn’t risen, but it snaps like a whip all the same. “You’ve already taken care of that today.”

_ God, I love you, but no _ . “Not that,” he waves his unoccupied hand, unperturbed. “Have you even bothered looking in a mirror these days?”

She doesn’t flinch,—Liv being Liv, though, it is the farthest thing from a surprise—nor do her lips move, pressed and whitened as they are. Her eyes, however, are bright with fire; eyebrows cocked; irises dark and wide, ready swallow him whole as her words cut home. _Here she goes_. “Don’t you dare,” she seethes, her gaze searing into his face. Perhaps hoping to melt off his skin, he considers wryly; so quickly that he thinks he might have imagined it.

He has seen—and been on the receiving end of—that look a thousand times, (FYI, the last few of them? Let’s just say that he’s immensely glad nobody came knocking for either of them and leave it at that—you know, to avoid responsibility regarding any kind of scarring whatsoever) and here he is, still standing. Bring it on,  _ cariño _ .

“Jake,” she sighs; her voice strained but somehow still echoing something—rage? Exasperation? He can’t quite tell, for the first time in forever—“You told me to choose, remember?” the question comes out gently, as though she were trying to remind him of how this came to be. Which, he deserves credit for, apparently.

His fingers move and he feels something that resembles the itch of a mosquito bite, as five small marks stand out against the skin of his palm, now free of pressure. They look like small, red quarters of moon.

“And I did," she draws out; her voice now small and tired, as though she had just stopped talking after hours and hours filled with words and little else.

_ Bullshit _ , he rages to himself, as thunderous and livid as a winter storm and its accompanying hues in the sky. It’s unusual of him to lose his temper so thoroughly, but his mind seems to be nothing if not a well of rage. At himself, at _him,_ at her stubbornness and fear; at this whole wretched thing.

“We both did,” he concedes, and his calm voice sounds alien to his own ears. “But I wanted for you to choose happiness; not this,” his voice trembles, anger vibrating alongside it as if it were a violin string, and then breaks like a mirror would; pointy shreds crashing to the ground. One after the other. “Not withering away and dying slowly, day by day like this,” he stops, the words coming on the cusp of a pant.

Liv is staring at him, silent as graveyard—unmoving, unscathed, completely locked into place.

“Never this,” he whispers feebly.

In the end—neither of them says anything anymore.

The entire trip back to D.C. is their version of walking on eggshells. Only, they’re doing the farthest thing from walking; they’re living and breathing on eggshells.

-:-

It’s not that he has spared no thought for the ring he unwillingly had to stash away. Truth be told, it’s the only reason he has any sanity left. The fact that he has actually lived through this once already sort of—no; scratch the _sort of_ thing, it does blow his mind.

Actually, no—scratch that again. He has a reason. He loves her too much to come close of thinking about quitting on her; let alone doing it.

_ And she knows all too well.  _ The grin spreads on its own, brief as it is. 

He’s suddenly reminded of a coy whisper. “Didn’t we have a date with a piano?”

He’d grinned; his arm guiding her closer. Kissed her slowly, in the meantime. Much of their life had been a whirlwind,—how could it have been otherwise, the logical side of him had added. _Hello there, former spy and fixer_ —so the newest of his goals was, _take things slowly._

Easier said than done, given the person that was currently kissing her way down to his neck.

Her teeth, devious little things that they were, kept nibbling at his skin, quick and faint; his hands were now against her back, urging her closer— _still not close enough._

Picking her up, he stilled; she was above the floor, still distant. Her legs came around his waist in the next second or so, (logistics was far, far away from him, at present) and her hands decided to start moving—nimble as they were, gripping through his hair and shirt and pressing rather impatiently against his back.

The words had come out soft against her hair, almost thin. “That we do,” he had squeezed one of her shoulders; a delicate gesture that meant, _I remember. I always remember._ “That we do.”

They found themselves skin to skin; the piano a backdrop against their joint, trembling hands. All thoughts of slowness had disappeared as though they had never really formed.

-:-

Shaking off the memory proves to be difficult; not because he is bitter exactly—no; it’s more of a low, pulsing ache. He and Liv make quite the team and, as cliché as that sounds, it just—it clicks. _In many ways._

Luck being the meddling bitch that it is, though; his newly found calm does not last long.

Quinn Perkins of all people—which, figures, _goddamn it. He trained her too well_ —notices something is up. And mentions it. _Of course._

Since their little escapade things have been tense—it is still him and Liv, after all—and all they have been doing is, glance, avoid and long (well; he has). Rinse and repeat.

“What’s that thing dancing around in your pocket?” Quinn asks, eyes sparkling.

He flat-out ignores her.

She coos, “Oh—is that a ring, Former Boss?”

“Since when did you get this nosy, Perkins?” he snaps, soft yet deadly; he is standing on the edge of a cliff, rage beckoning him in.

She inches closer, brows furrowed, and responds in kind; her words are clothed in bluntness, and equally cold. “Since when did you get this gloomy, Ballard?”

Not even cicadas stir; silence looms over every person in the room, and then—“I’ll be damned all the way to hell; that is a _wedding ring,_ ” the last word drops like a bomb. No shelter in sight, though.

Everyone in the room turns; Liv and Fitz included. _I’ll be damned, indeed._

“This, I have to see,” it’s not a scream, but the nuance in Fitz’s words counts as plenty boisterous in his book; disbelieving, too. __

_ Son of a bitch. _

-:-

He slips the ring back onto his finger after excusing himself—a quick motion, a physical blink, if there has ever been one.

Once he is back in the room five pair of eyes—yes; even Huck’s and Mellie’s—glue themselves to his face as though he were in the process of growing another one.

“What?” another subtle, clean snap. “I’m married. Sue me,”

Surprisingly, Liv is the one who speaks up, untouched (or seemingly so) by his outburst; however controlled it might have been. _As usual,_ he tells himself; the hope pride has not lightened up his face humming softly somewhere in his head.

“Did my father,” she stops; swallows, as though there were a stone in her throat. “Did he put you up to this?”

He does not mean what happens next to actually happen; answering seems too complicated to entertain as a possibility, but his mind most definitely has _not_ set alternatives.

His mouth opens, doubt still lurking in his throat, and he laughs; a humorless, cold, uncontrollable laugh.

Her eyes widen as though he had actually hit her; the laugh dies down like a flame, slow and lingering.

He finds himself walking to her. He has done so a million times, at a million different speeds, in as many conditions; literal meaning aside, it feels like walking the road home, familiar and intimate as it is.

He is close enough the see the circles under her eyes and for a moment, his gut tightens—fury brewing. He can’t stand it.

“Look at the inscription on the inside of the ring,” he murmurs; proceeds to press it her palm, quick and gentle, as though he were entrusting her with something extremely delicate.

Her brows furrow. “What? Why?”

“Just,” he’s pleading. _Great._ “Do it, please.”

“ _Give me a thousand kisses, then a hundred_ ,” she reads, and he hears her voice as it catches; it disappears in less than a blink. “ _Then yet a thousand, then a second hundred,_ ” her voice flattens and muffles. “ _We will confuse our counting that we may not know the reckoning_ ,” she stops, her voice a flimsy, thinning thread.

Recognition flares. Mellie is the first to speak. “Catullus?” she sounds as though she had just found the proof of a crime in the most unlikely of places. “What the hell is _Catullus_ doing on your wedding ring?”

“Bride’s choice,” he says, gruff. “I picked hers,” he adds, shrugging.

The words have barely been breathed out, when Liv blinks; it’s a fast movement. Somehow, though, time feels like it has slowed down and seconds have crawled by, careless and exhausting, as she does so. “Was it payback?” she asks. Low, whip-like.

_ Jesus. Christ. _

“Why the fuck would it have been?” he doesn’t bother keeping his tone low.Then, through gritted teeth, “Guess you’re getting people mixed up,” he sighs, and he can hear the anger as it drips beneath the words; it feels cold and insistent— _tick tick tick._

“And that’s supposed to mean something,” the edge of her voice has nothing to envy compared to a knife. “How, exactly?”

“You know how, goddamn it,” he thunders. “You’re not—I’m not,” he blows out a breath. What he wants to say is what he can’t. 

( _They’ve read that poem a gazillion times. In whispers, they’ve murmured it, skin to skin, the words a breath on their lips. They have halted it mid-verse, because they have never been patient. They have hummed it wordlessly in the dark, if they felt restless. They have fallen asleep as one of them read it_ —it’s a turn ritual, by now— _comfort hidden in the words_.) __

“I wouldn’t do that,” he relents; his emotions have not stopped warring, but his voice has weakened. “And you should be aware of that,” he hisses.

“I thought I was,” deep, unchecked hurt.

“You’re not this,” he says. Soft, low; as though it were just them in the room, “You know it and I know it, but somehow you’re still here,” he stares, unflinching and unblinking, “ _Stuck_.”

Liv doesn’t move; Fitz, however, snaps, clearly riled up. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

_ You would like me to spell it out, wouldn’t you? _

“It means,” he seethes. “That you’re blind, Mr. President,” there. Composed, simple, formal; no blood spilled. Yet.

“Excuse me?” Fitz’s voice sounds like the beginning of a thunderclap; outrage gleaming sharply in two little words. _Ah._ The nerve lies there, open and clearly throbbing.

“You heard me,” anger is not simmering beneath his words anymore; instead, coolness has molded them into stone and they fall out, one after the other.

He moves away from them, the ring falling back into place—Liv still hasn’t looked him in the eye.

His voice rises, emotions engulfing him again, bright and blinding. “She’s here, wasting away, day by day; and you do not notice because, _she’s here with you and supporting you and basically adoring you_ ,” the words taste like acid, his mouth twisting into a dark grimace. “Well, here’s your wake up call, Flyboy: _she made you,”_ pride might be raining down in his words; he doesn’t care. “She could just as easily _tear you down_ , because that’s who Olivia Pope is; A hurricane,” he doesn’t need a mirror to know that he is smiling.

“Says who, huh?” Fitz spits, glaring. “The guy who got caught in the havoc she wreaked?”

“Look at you, trying to be funny,” the taunt is another low note; his throat vibrates, tense and on the breaking point. “No; I’m the guy who holds her hands as the havoc hits; the guy who lets the havoc hit—unless, of course, it tries to hit her,”

“Quite self-centered, this view you have, isn’t,” he sneers.

_ Here he goes again, spinning it like the light shoots out of his ass.  _

“Not really, no,” he does not sound—or look—one bit ruffled; been there, done that, Fitz—stopped working a while ago. “Considering she screamed at me to, and I quote, _get your ass back in here or I’ll haunt you ‘till you die because this hurts like a pack of bitches_ ,” this being a nasty contraction that nearly had him losing sensitivity in his left hand. But he doesn’t need to know that, yet. “I’d say the feeling is mutual, Mr. President.”

His mouth snaps open, hangs like that as though it were part of processing what he’s just heard, and then clicks shut. _All in under five minutes. I think I just set a record._

“Still,” he has the decency—is it really? Or is he just that slow on the uptake?—to sputter, brows furrowed. “Doesn’t mean that being here is hurting her, Captain Ballard,” there he goes, all stiff and formal. “Last I checked she chose this. By herself.”

He sighs; his throat aches with the effort he is making, words being swallowed back even though each of them feels like lava. Resignation spills and he sighs again, defeated.

“Which just proves my point, Fitz,” he says again, toneless; he has started talking to a wall without noticing. “You see anything _but_ Liv,” it’s not accusation, he would have to be firing the words out, if it were; instead, they are just spilling out, tired and disoriented. “Because, yes; she might have chosen this, but—it. Isn’t. Good. For. Her,” his finger shoots out, pointing at her face (and yes; it is shaky). “You see those eyes? They’re small, and they have bags under them. She’s pale, and she looks aimless,” sharp words; his own throat feels their cut, one by one. “Olivia Pope looks _aimless_ , _for fuck’s sake._ Doesn’t that throw you off? Not even a little bit?” he stops—eyes narrowed, throat burning. “She isn’t a sidepiece; and playing that part to try and appease you is destroying her. Since you love her—as you so frequently like to remind every eardrum available—shouldn’t that be your priority?”

He should not have said anything; he knows he shouldn’t have, but now he can’t stop.

“And do not, for the love of God, play the Leader-Of-The-Free-World card, because I can assure you that, A) It has no relevance in this; and B) It makes you out to be a brainless, entitled prick.”

The last word drops like a cue—and the calm the room had previously fallen into disrupts as though someone had snapped their fingers out of complete boredom at his outpour of unsolicited truth. 

“I’m the prick?” he hisses, clenched hand whitening. “ _I’m the prick_ ; says the sore loser,”

Quinn and Huck shift their feet, as though they would rather be anywhere but here; their unease sticking out like a sore thumb. Mellie seems frozen into a stupor, eyes wide open and feet glued to the ground.

Liv, on the other hand, is like a blank canvas. Unmoving, unreactive, unfeeling.

His heart twists, unease spreading to his limbs, aplenty and definitely, thickly bitter.

“Like I said,” he says, and his voice is strangely steady; deafening even, as the whole room seems to have settled on collectively holding its breath until this blows over. _Or punches start to be thrown away like pennies._ “An entitled prick, ladies and gentleman.”

He leaves the room as tense silence stretches, fragile and almost dream-like, on his heels as though it were a vicious, unstoppable fire.

-:-

He wakes again—grasping as he lies still, tightly held in the bone-crushing grip of nausea. 

Rolling over, this is what he finds: a bed too big to be his only, warm as though whoever had been lying on the other side hadn’t been up for long, the sheets rumpled into a curved mess; his wedding ring still in place, the skin around it slightly clammy. The door standing ajar, as though whoever had left had tried not to disturb. 

The sigh that steals its way out of his throat is a quick, sudden jab of gratitude. _He’s back._

He stretches as kinks in his shoulders shatter with a muffled popping noise.

It takes him a little time; the feeling of being finally, truly home sinks in slowly, like when you dip your toes in the sea, and then your foot and heel and ankle, hesitancy turning into relief; he hears them in a padding echo, closer and closer, the sound sharpening step by step.

His lips find themselves bending, teeth showing, before he can even realize what he is actually doing.

Liv’s voice comes to his ears first, still distant enough for a few words to slur a bit. “…see if he’s awake, okay?” then, sternly (he hears the cheer, though. And he’s gonna bet whatever he can that she’s smiling), “remember, Mel: no jumping on the bed.”

The grin he’s sporting does not, contrary to what you might think, split his face in a half—as little short of a miracle as that might sound, and as close to that as it feels, it’s true. 

Liv has barely time to set foot on the threshold before a small voice calls, “Papa,” in a long squeal.

His heart does a backflip. It’s not the first time,—that one was a lot slower, and he hadn’t been in bed; it had felt as though he was going to explode right there—but the feeling never changes.

She’s up on the bed and crawling toward him before either of them can say a word, little face set in concentration, brown eyes fixed on him. _And people wonder whose child she is._ That look screams Liv as much as red wine does.

He sits up as slowly as he can. “Hey, munchkin,” affection curls around the word, tight and warm.

“Mama said you _v_ ere sick,” she says, and the last word trembles.

He nods.

“You _v_ ill nicht eat with us?” his lips crook to the side. German had been his pregnancy contribution. Even some of her lullabies had been sung in smooth, soft German, much to Liv’s initial shock. 

“Tell you what, Mel,” he says as he holds her close, Liv’s gaze playful over her little shoulder. “I’ll try,”

She giggles.

“Just give me and mama a minute, alright?”

She kisses his stubble-covered cheek—“It itches, papa,” she wails, before scurrying off the bed with some help from Liv—and crawls off, because, _go set ‘able._

“Are you really up for it?” 

He nods; she always gets like this when he comes back—ever since he told her—which really helps, because at least about this, he won’t be forced to lie. The concern doesn’t hurt either; a few times nausea got so bad he could barely sit up, let alone speak and eat.

“I am, but thanks for asking,”

She comes closer, and he doesn’t really notice how, but they end up hugging, no words needed; it’s tight and warm and— _it is home_. 

They stay there, her head against his collarbone and his shoulder coated in her hair, breathing each other in.

“Mama! Papa!” Mel calls, high-pitched and cheery even though the impatience shines. “ _I’m hungry._ ”

The laugh Liv makes, hearty and full, vibrates against his throat—and he finds himself sharing, his hand curled tightly around hers as they get up to feed that little black hole.

Her wedding ring reads, _I carry your heart with me. I carry it in mine_ —as true as the fact that two tiny pieces are currently waiting in the kitchen and probably willing them to walk faster along the hallway at the thought of food.

The Sun is shining, and here they are—standing and thriving.

**Author's Note:**

> Liv's ring inscription: a Catullus quote (Duh!) which reminded me of them while rewatching Outlander s2  
> Jake's: a line from an E.E. Cummings poem that was used as a wedding vow by Abby Lockhart on E.R.  
> Melody's name: a gift to Mellie, because in my headcanon (which, who knows, might get to be a fic in this verse or somewhere else in the ideas in my head) she roots for them. On this note, more Mellie/Jake scenes PLEASE


End file.
